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Think Progress's Man of Hate

How Wajahat Ali, one of the authors of the Center for American Progress's Islamophobia report, acts as a water-boy for jihad.

The Holy Land Foundation case did more than bring down the primary fundraising entity for Hamas in the United States; it also exposed the unwillingness of Muslims in America to make a clean break with their sympathies for Islamic terrorism.

So it is not surprising that Wajahat Ali, one of the authors of Fear Inc, the Center for American Progress's recent report on "Islamophobia," was also a passionate defender of the Holy Land Foundation, denouncing the prosecution of the “once highly-respected HLF” as a pro-Israel policy initiative and a notch on the Bush Administration’s “get a terrorist’ club”.

A portion of the article was devoted to a defense of Sami Al-Arian, the head of Islamic Jihad in the United States. On his blog, Wajahat Ali ran a third-party piece which described Al-Arian as “one of the earliest victims of the ‘war on terror’” and listed a site to help donate to his legal campaign.

The “Fear Inc.” report boasted of exposing a network of Islamophobes stirring up prejudice against Muslims; but that made it all the more curious that some of those targeted in the report were Muslims.

Zudhi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, was condemned because he “dangerously and incorrectly labels mainstream Muslim-American organizations as subversive.”

The Holy Land Foundation represented one such difference of opinion between Ali and Jasser of what constitutes a “mainstream Muslim-American organization”.

While Jasser’s American Islamic Forum for Democracy hailed the guilty verdict for its willingness “to hold Islamists accountable for their countenance of front charities and organizations which support terrorism either directly or indirectly”; Ali instead chose to side with the Holy Land Foundation and against the United States.

The “Fear Inc.” report continues the battle by attacking some of the Muslim and Jewish figures who have taken a stand against Islamic terrorism and their front groups in the United States. Rather than directly defending groups like the Holy Land Foundation, it instead tries to silence their critics.

Not only do Ali and his co-authors attack Zuhdi Jasser and Tawfik Hamid, a former radical and current reformer, but Ali also slurred Irshad Manji, a lesbian feminist and reformer as an “info-tainment prostitute” and one of the “paid henchmen” of the “Islam-haters” for questioning the divinity of the Koran.

Does questioning the divinity of the Koran make one a tool of the “Islam-haters”, if so the standards for what qualifies as Islamophobia are defined down to questioning Islamic theology in any significant way.

What would lead Wajahat Ali to defend Hamas’ bagmen, bitterly denounce Mubarak long before Tahrir Square, attack Israel over Gaza and finally smear moderate Muslims who criticize Brotherhood front groups or dissent from conservative interpretations of Islamic theology? The common denominator in all of these is the Brotherhood, the theologically reactionary mothership organization of Hamas in Gaza, with ambitions to rule Egypt.

During his college days, Wajahat Ali was on the board of the Muslim Students Association. The MSA is the original Brotherhood front group, which the NYPD called an “incubator for radicalism” and former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo described as “a recruitment tool to bring Muslims into the Brotherhood.”

Should a member of a Muslim Brotherhood linked group really be contributing to a report that attempts to silence the very researchers who have been closely tracking the organization? Would the Center for American Progress allow a member of a group related to the KKK to contribute to a similar report?

Wajahat Ali’s co-authorship of a report by a left-wing think tank is even more perverse as he also claims that the left hates Muslims because they “have certain beliefs contradictory to radical feminist and gay ideologies.”

So according to one of the co-authors of its own report, the Center is also guilty of Islamophobia, now that Islamophobia has been further defined down to mean people who believe in women’s rights and gay rights.

Wajahat Ali’s extremism discredits the report that he played a role in authoring, and proves that the Center for American Progress is actually helping extremists silence the moderates, while acting as water-boys for the Jihad.

Last year, Wajahat Ali published a third-party article on his blog dealing with police shootings, Islamophobia and Israel’s resistance to Islamic terrorism in the Gaza that began with the quote: “You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.”

After the inauguration, Ali warned that Obama; “must at the very least interact with democratically elected Muslim governments and representatives, such as Hamas and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad of Iran” and added that “a wholesale demonization and rejection of Islamic based governments and political groups is an affront to the Muslims who elected them.”

Obama’s choice of Cairo also did not meet with Ali’s approval. Why couldn’t he have chosen Turkey, Ali wondered, with its “successful marriage of secular democracy and Islam.” He then went on to praise the AKP, which ruthlessly suppresses the secular opposition, massacres civilians and supports terrorism.

Ali denounced the “brutal U.S. foreign policy” which “has killed thousands of innocents” and the “dangerously belligerent offensive in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” and accused the Bush Administration of “tone-deaf moral vacancy” for affirming Israel’s right to self-defense and agreeing “that the onus is on Hamas to renew the truce.”

But where is all that anger in Wajahat Ali’s own private “Hate Inc.” really coming from? Ali was born in California and it is doubtful that he ever set foot in any of the places that he is so angry about. America has been good to him, rewarding him with two careers, as a lawyer and a playwright, despite his family’s history of criminal activities in this country.

This is the paradox of so many Muslims in America who are successful, but deeply resentful. Faisal Shazhad, Nidal Hasan, Naveed Haq and so many others had degrees and successful careers in front of them. They were not oppressed, but they were unable to leave their hatred behind.

The same is sadly true of Wajahat Ali, who with the backing of a liberal organization, participates in a campaign of hate against Jews, moderate Muslims and anyone else who runs afoul of the Brotherhood agenda. “Fear Inc.” is as much an expression of that anger as a car bomb in Times Square.